Syria

President Barack Obama is considering a variety of high-profile figures as his candidate to be the next U.S. defense secretary and replace the resigning Chuck Hagel, administration sources said on Dec. 1.
 

The United States on Dec. 1 played down the idea of creating a buffer zone along the Syria-Turkish border after a media report cited it as a possible concession to Turkey in return for use of bases to launch attacks on Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants in Syria.

The Lebanese army detained the wife and one of the sons of the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as they crossed from Syria in recent days, Lebanese security officials said on Dec. 2.

The Turkish military has ruled out Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition party's claims that Islamist jihadists fired on Syrian Kurdish militants from the Turkish side of the border with Syria.

The sources instead claim that Syrian Kurds were using a Turkish depot for shelter while Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants stayed across the border for only "a few minutes."

Balkan security services intensify co-operation against ISIL recruits

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is bent on raising his profile in the Islamic world, or at least the fundamentalist part of that world, at the expense of Turkey’s reputation, and standing in the West.

Alois Brunner, one of the world’s most wanted Nazi war criminals responsible for sending tens of thousands of Jews including 44,000 Greeks to death camps, died four years ago in Syria, it has emerged.

The United States and Turkey are closing in on a deal that will allow the U.S. military and allied forces to use Turkish air bases in their campaign against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants in Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported Dec. 1.

A lack of funds has forced the U.N. World Food Programme to stop providing food vouchers for 1.7 million Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, the agency said Dec. 1.

Turkey's Environment and Urbanization Ministry has approved the environment assessment report for a nuclear power plant construction project in the Akkuyu district of the southern province of Mersin.

The over 3,000-page report has been prepared for Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, which will be built by Russia’s Rosatom.